Mali counter-coup fails

An attempted counter-coup by forces loyal to Mali's ousted president appeared to have failed after the junta now running the country confirmed that it had control of key institutions, including state television.

Gunfire was heard throughout Monday night and continued in sporadic pockets in the capital, Bamako, early Tuesday.

Sources said that the fighting appeared to have been an attempt by elite troops still loyal to President Amadou Toure, deposed in a coup five weeks ago, to take back power.

The worst of the clashes took place at Bamako's international airport, at its television and radio stations and at a rebel garrison town just outside the capital.

There were reports of casualties but emergency services and junta officials were unable to give details on Tuesday morning.

"To be frank, it's been a very chaotic night, and we're not sure exactly how close Toure's men got to taking back control," said one Western diplomat in Bamako. "It seems now that they failed. But it shows that the junta is far from popular in all sections of the army, which is a dangerous situation."

By early Tuesday, soldiers supporting coup leader Capt Amadou Sanogo appeared on state television to report that key installations remained in their control.

They also paraded prisoners captured during the night, who were said to be "foreign fighters" and "mercenaries" who had launched attacks on the airport and other locations to "destabilise the return to constitutional order".

Several arrests had been made and others involved "will be actively tracked down", one of the coup's commanders said.

The March 22 coup, shortly before elections, shattered Mali's image as a democratic success story in the region.

The junta has agreed to hand power over to Dioncounda Traore, the former parliament speaker, who was sworn in as interim president on April 12, but the situation in the country has remained volatile.

In the north, an area the size of France is now in the hands of Islamist militias and Tuareg separatist rebels, many of them battle-hardened and well-armed after serving as mercenaries in the Libyan conflict.

The regional grouping ECOWAS, the Economic Community of West African States, has mediated the handover to a civilian government and pressured the junta to return to the barracks, with mixed success.

Captain Sanogo on Saturday rejected a plan by ECOWAS leaders to send troops to oversee the transition period, and also refused their demand for elections in Mali within 12 months.